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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

(Just for the record, I had to Google to see who was in that movie. I thought it was Timberlake. It probably would've been funnier if I'd written it that way.)

The AP is reporting that a kid from Fort Stewart has been arrested after rapping about how getting stop-lossed was gonna make him shoot up a bunch of people with an M-4, including his brigade and battalion commanders.

Angry that the military planned to send him back to Iraq past his date to leave the military, a Fort Stewart soldier recorded a hip-hop song that blasts the Army and describes going on a shooting spree, an act that led his commanders to decide that the soldier posed a threat to his unit.

The infantry soldier, Spc. Marc A. Hall, has been jailed on criminal charges in Liberty County, Ga., for the past month for a song and other statements that one of his lawyers insists were simply a form of protest.

"They're saying it's a threat. We're saying it's a fantasy," said Jim Klimaski, a Washington civilian attorney who has talked to Hall about the case. "He's mad, but he's not stupid. He's not violent."

The article doesn't say how old Spc. Hall is, but I figure he's probably 21 or 22, considering his enlistment date. Let's be serious: 21-year old kids are dumb. And as Schmedlap has noted, 21-year old kids in the Army like to bitch about everything. Now don't get me wrong, getting stop-lossed will cramp your style, so this isn't just like complaining about the food. But dude, didn't it occur to you that six weeks after a shooting rampage on an Army base probably wasn't the best time to rap about a shooting rampage on an Army base?

Hall posted the song, called "Stop Loss," on his Web site. Klimaski said he also played it for many soldiers in his unit, the 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division.

On the recording, Hall denounces the Army for the policy used to keep thousands of soldiers in the ranks beyond their scheduled dates to leave the military. He also raps about opening fire with his military-issue M-4 rifle.

"I got a (expletive) magazine with 30 rounds, on a three-round burst, ready to fire down," Hall raps on the recording. "Still against the wall, I grab my M-4, spray and watch all the bodies hit the floor.

"I bet you never stop-loss nobody no more, in your next lifetime of course. No remorse."

I wonder how that remorse thing is going now.

Seriously though, even considering the Hasan thing, how do you feel about the way that the Army's handling this? It's probably a little reactionary, yeah, but can they afford to take chances with stuff like this? He's mad about still being in the Army, and about being in Iraq again, and he's armed and has the freedom to use weapons, and that could pose a danger to his fellow soliders... but doesn't that go for a number of guys who are equally pissed-off and just never vented about it on YouTube? Dude's life is gonna be pretty well ruined whether he goes to the slammer or just gets dishonorably discharged without further punishment, and all because he got pissed off and went all Eminem on everyone. Fair?

Gunslinger, did laying down an angry track ever occur to you when you got stop-lossed? I guess the kid should've just blogged about it.

UPDATE: Whoops, I am dumb and Madhu is very smart. Turns out this guy is 34 -- it says so in the article -- and he's just acting like a retarded 21-year old. My bad.

Wow. In my opinion this guy just earned himself some street cred. Think about all of the assertions that other rappers make about busting caps into their rivals or performing various forms of sexual assault upon said rivals' ho's. Clearly, nobody takes those threats seriously, since those guys don't get arrested until they actually act upon their threats. But this guy makes a threat and The Man springs into action.

On the other hand, a 34-year-old E-4 posting videos of his rapping on YouTube? Maybe spending a few years in the big house will be a step up from his likely alternative: living in his parents' house.

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